The desire to reliably support items has been well known for years. Particular attention has focused on the support of musical instruments, and other musical items, because of their delicate nature and vulnerability to damage, among other reasons. However, despite this attention, there still are deficiencies in existing, conventionally used designs. Such deficiencies may include, but are certainly not limited to, inefficiencies accompanying the loss of musician preferred settings (e.g., a preferred height) upon apparatus breakdown (e.g., the breakdown of a keyboard stand after a show), limited adjustability of apparatus (e.g., the limited adjustability of conventional keyboard stands), “untidy”, cluttered power cables organization (or lack thereof), unnecessarily high risk of item damage during use thereof (e.g., keyboard slippage off a support), unnecessary complexity of design (e.g., as seen in conventional guitar stands featuring retainers on a support yoke), stands (e.g., microphone stands) of sub-optimal strength, unable to support a downward weight applied by, e.g., a gesturing singer, and a complete absence of any apparatus that assist in and seek to facilitate the awkward and difficult raising or lowering of stand supported speakers. Indeed, embodiments of the inventive technology seek to resolve, or at least mitigate, one or more of these problems.